For Mimi Pond, the desire to do a book about the Mitford sisters – six larger-than-life British eccentrics (and one brother) who created a stir in both British and American culture – was obvious.
“They defined the entire 20th century with the people they knew alone – I mean, from Adolf Hitler to the Black Panthers,” she says, referring to the outlandish, sometimes awful, real-life escapades of this unusual sextet. “It just takes in the scope of the entire 20th century.”
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In her entertaining new graphic history, “Do Admit! The Mitford Sisters and Me,” the Los Angeles-based cartoonist and author also provides the only thing missing from the incredible history of these unconventional upper-crust siblings: Tales from Pond’s own childhood in San Diego, where she dreamed about a more sophisticated life like the ones she imagined the Mitfords had.
Pond weaves elements of personal memoir in with the lives of the sisters, who were (in birth order): Nancy, the successful novelist who spent much of her adult life in France; Pamela, the quiet lover of animals and country life (and sometime smuggler of chicken eggs); Diana, the beauty who left her Guinness beer-heir husband for the leader of the British Union of Fascists and hosted Adolf Hitler at her wedding; Unity, the obsessed emigre who became a confidant of Hitler and tried to take her own life when England and Germany went to war; Jessica, the Communist who left home for the U.S. where she became a civil rights crusader and best-selling muckraking author of “The American Way of Death” and other books; and Deborah, the real-life duchess and close friend of President John F. Kennedy.
That overstuffed paragraph doesn’t come near to gathering all of their wild exploits – nor does it attempt to explain the mind-boggling number of nicknames they gave each other, although Pond helpfully does so you’ll know your “Honks” from your “Bobo,” your “Woo” from your “Soo.”
Pond, who wrote the first episode of “The Simpsons” that aired on TV, tells the Mitfords’ engrossing story in a fun, visually captivating style using Prussian blue ink, dramatic page layouts and clever, often hilarious, text.
She spoke by phone about the book, the sisters, and her own life story. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Q. What attracted you to the story of the Mitfords?
It was a world more or less the opposite of mine, you know? England, the aristocracy. It was kind of like everything my life wasn’t.
Q. What does the book’s title “Do Admit!” mean?
They used to say that to each other. It’s like, “Come on, agree that I’m right.” They were always fighting with each other.
It resonates for me because I have two brothers who would never, ever admit that I was right about anything. I always wanted, desperately wanted, sisters, and I never had any. And once I finished this thing, I was like, “Well, maybe sisters are not the greatest thing.”
Q. Diana, a fascist who was chummy with Hitler, was denounced by her sister Nancy and locked up for a time during the war, and although loathed by many, she didn’t seem to suffer major consequences for having been so closely aligned with Britain and the Allies’ enemies during the war.
Oh, my God, she’s just astonishing. In the 1989 interview on [the British radio program] Desert Island Discs, she says she couldn’t help but admire Hitler. And you’re like, ‘What?!’ [mimicking the glamorous Diana’s admirers] “She’s so beautiful, you couldn’t help but adore her!” “She’s so charming.” Holy crap. I just feel like they used to let people get away with so much more than they do now.
Q. Diana introduced her younger sister Unity to Hitler, and the two became close friends. Once Britain declared war on Germany, a distraught Unity shot herself but survived. She is kind of a cypher.
Yeah, if she had not shot herself, if she had continued on her path and had lived somehow through it, she’d probably be as vilified as Diana, who was a die-hard fascist. But with Unity, I feel like there’s some kind of mental illness or some issue about her that gives her a little more of a pass. I mean, she’s a tragic figure; she’s pathetic, and she’s a mess. And she was Jessica’s favorite sister, despite all that.
Q. Speaking of Jessica, you say in the book that she was your favorite sister.
She really had the courage of her convictions, whereas the rest of them pretty much said, “Well, I’m an aristocrat; that’s just the way the world works, and I’m just going to go along with it.”
She turned her back on her life as an aristocrat and became completely American. She embraced America, she embraced the democratic system, she embraced fighting for justice. She had the foresight to see that things were going to change.
She’s a woman in the 1950s who had friends of other races and invited not one, but numerous Black families to live under her roof. And she also went out and she fronted for Black families to buy houses in White neighborhoods in Oakland at a time when that was a serious risk. And her daughter, Dinky, told me that someone came up to her at her 50th high school reunion from Oakland Tech High School and said, “Your mother changed my life. She fronted for my family so that we could buy a house in a good neighborhood, and it changed everything for us.” She did that over and over and over again.
She went to Mississippi and went door to door to try to get justice for a Black man wrongly accused of rape, and she put in the time in ways that most people wouldn’t even consider.
Q. Let me ask you about the Mitford-inspired TV show (which you were not involved with), “Outrageous.” You had a piece in the New Yorker about it.
I mean, I can understand them taking artistic license … but what I really couldn’t forgive was the fact that there’s no humor in it. It’s all about sibling rivalry and drama and that evil, sexy [leader of the British Union of Fascists Oswald] Mosley, you know? I mean, the two of them [Diana and Mosley] are just so awful, and they’re just like bargain-basement fascists on top of it.
It didn’t show you the appeal of them and their charm and the wit – even Diana and Unity could be really funny and fun. And the rest of them were just screamingly funny.
Q. There were six sisters, each with a stupifying number of nicknames. Was it hard to tell them apart?
The challenge for me was figuring out how to draw them, so that they were each individualized, because they do have resemblances to each other. Like any family, there are distinctions, and you just have to zero in on that. But no, it didn’t take me long to distinguish who was who, because they define themselves so distinctly.
Q. You wrote the first episode of “The Simpsons” that aired. Can you talk about that?
Well, it’s not a happy story because I was friends with Matt Groening … it always paints me as the turd in the punch bowl, because everyone wants to believe that it’s just like this one big, happy family.
I wasn’t asked to be on staff. For years, I thought it was, “Oh, I guess I just wasn’t good enough,” only to find out that Sam Simon didn’t want any women on staff because he was going through a divorce, and he also only wanted Harvard writers. If I’d known that — and this is something that Matt himself finally confirmed to me himself — I wouldn’t have beaten myself up so much. If I’d been on staff, I’d be a millionaire. I still get residual checks for the one episode, but if I’d been on staff and had written more than two or three of them, I’d be doing well.
Q. Let me ask you about the look of the book, which uses that rich blue and is really dynamic.
The challenge was not to make it talking heads, because most autobiographical comics and nonfiction comics have nothing but talking heads, panel after panel, and it’s boring. I just wanted to find new ways of getting the information across.
Pinterest became my best friend. I had reference photos of where they lived and reference photos of each of them. I had perfume ads from the ’30s and ’40s. I had circus posters, movie posters, pictures of Oakland, airplane ads, perfume ads, vintage office supplies, medieval manuscripts, lettering, photos of the Blitz, British propaganda posters, German and Nazi and Soviet propaganda, English illustration, American illustration, just like on and on and on.
So if I were ever at a loss for ideas, I could go to Pinterest. It’s just really a fantastic tool to have.
Q. How long did you work on this book?
Oh, just six years.
Q. Is there anything you wanted to discuss that we didn’t touch on?
What’s important to me is that the lives of women be seen as being as important as the lives of men.
I became interested in history mostly because of the Mitford sisters, and I learned everything there is to know about 20th-century history by studying them. When it’s framed in the perspective of people and personalities, it’s so much more engaging than when you’re just talking about troop movements.
To find out that [French general and post-WWII president of France] Charles de Gaulle’s nickname in high school was ‘The Asparagus,’ and that behind his back [British Prime Minister] Winston Churchill said he looked like “a female llama surprised in her bath” – that’s golden.
I just think that history could be taught like that more often.
Mimi Pond in conversation about ‘Do Admit!’ with Kristen SchaalWhen: 7 p.m., Sept. 10Where: Skylight Books, 1818 N Vermont Ave, Los AngelesInformation: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-mimi-pond-presents-do-admit-mitford-sisters-and-me-w-kristen-schaal